e of Liberty."

Moderate men might think, in the winter of 1773, that "the Iron hand of
oppression tearing the choicest Fruit from the Fair Tree of Liberty" was
a figure of speech which did not shape itself with nice flexibility to
the exact form and pressure of observable facts. It is the limitation
of moderate men to be much governed by observable facts; and if the
majority could not at once rise to the rhetoric of Samuel Adams, it
was doubtless because they had not his instinctive sense of the Arch
Conspirator's truly implacable enmity to America. The full measure of
this enmity Mr. Adams lived in the hope of some day revealing.

It was of course well known that Mr. Bernard had formerly written home
letters most injurious to the province; and in 1770 there "was abundant
reason to be jealous," as Samuel Adams, writing on behalf of the Town
of Boston, assured Benjamin Franklin, "that the most mischievous and
virulent accounts have been lately sent to Administration from Castle
William," no doubt from the Commissioners of the Customs. Conveying
malicious and unfounded misrepresentations of America under the seal of
official correspondence had indeed long been a favorite means of mending
the fortunes of those decayed gentlemen and bankrupt politicians whose
ambition it was to rise in office by playing the sycophant to some great
man in England. Mr. Bernard had "played this game," and had been found
out at it, as every one knew. But Mr. Bernard was no American; and it
was scarcely to be imagined that Mr. Hutchinson, who boasted "that his
Ancestors were of the first Rank and figure in the Country, who... had
all the Honors lavished upon him which his Fellow-Citizens had it in
their power to bestow, who professed the strongest attachment to his
native Country and the most tender feelings for its Rights,... should be
so lost to all sense of Gratitude and public Love as to aid the Designs
of despotick power for the sake of rising a single step higher."

This was indeed scarcely to be imagined, yet Samuel Adams imagined it
perfectly. Before there was any material evidence of the fact, he was
able, by reasonable inference, to erect well-grounded suspicions into
a kind of working hypothesis. Mr. Hutchinson, Governor of the Province,
was an Enemy of Liberty with many English friends; he would be required
by official duty and led by personal inclination to maintain a regular
correspondence with high officials in England; from whi